Owww and ouch! I am now really suffering as in a rare display of mental resolve and dedication I made the Gateshead and Whickham session at the new Blaydon Pool tonight, and with the help of some well timed encouragement from the original Fairy Snow Baby ("FSB") (it's a very old and involved story but he now masquerades under the name of David Chaney) I stayed in for 95 mins during which time we covered 4000m.
I can't really complain too much cos I set the workout, typical Gateshead Masters session no prior consideration, everyone just arrived on the pool side and after a brief consultation discovered I was the only one who had a cunning plan as to how we could amuse ourselves for the next couple of hours.
The work out was very loosely based around a one sided 600 m Hungarian. Regrettably I am too tired and probably incapable of explaining this concept properly, suffice to say that for any non swimmers who may have stumbled upon this Blog and for some unknown reason have continued reading, please just take my word for it that I am not talking about a very tall one legged Eastern European.
600 Warm up
2 x 300 pull @ 5.45s
3 x 200 progressive @ 3.45 No 1 easy, No 2 hard 100 easy 100, No 3 hard 200*
4 x 150 @ 3.30 drill (25 swim, 25 catch up 25 fists**, 25 kayak, 25 catch up, 25 swim)
6 x 100 @ 2.30 working on 4 dolphin kicks off the wall and 2 strokes before take breath on each 25***
12 x 50's @ 70 s up IM order, down free
16 x 25's @ 5s RI Swim down trying to stretch your stroke out and reduce your stroke rate to counter act the fact that for the last hour your stroke has been shortening as you become progressively more tired.
Total 4000m
Cumulative Total 7,800m
My limited thought processes behind this programme were; that this was the first time back after the Christmas break for everyone, (I don't think I'm giving away any state secrets if I divulge that I am not the only Binge Swimmer in my Masters squad, although even if I say so myself I am by far the most accomplished.) so we needed to have a bit more to think about as we were swimming, other than the pain and tedium of churning out length after length, whilst getting progressively slower with an ever increasing stroke rate. Also I have previously referred to my gnat like attention span and therefore I didn't want to do any single swim which would be too long or too many repeats of anything so basing the set around 600 seemed just about right.
For the sake of completeness the swim down should probably have been 24 x 25's but I originally only planned to do 8 so the 16 suggested by the FSB seemed a good compromise and rounded the set out quite nicely. I have added some notes covering my personal struggles and thoughts on the session which may assist if anyone has even more limited imagination than me and wants to try it out.
* the problem with this bit was there was no such thing as easy,
** I should really have known better than to include this drill in the first session back cos fist swimming is bloody hard work, (the full stroke equivalent of kick according to The Park Ranger (Kelly)),
*** the last 25 of each repeat should have been own choice kick, but I was having serious senility issues and kept forgetting the kick bit
Night Night
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